The professor, Labour and Brexit

JEREMY Corbyn’s old mucker looked perplexed when asked about the Labour leader and Brexit.

Professor Gus John, a leading anti-racism campaigner, was speaking at Housmans bookshop in King’s Cross when the question popped up.

Professor John, who studied for the priesthood and was a Dominican friar before becoming a top race-relations adviser and education expert, condemned Brexit as a “racist backlash” against decades of impover­ish­ment, in the same vein as Donald Trump’s on the stump.

But when asked why Corbyn was so keen on Brexit, the professor, who has known him for decades, was almost lost for words. “He seems to have a belief that he can realise his ideals through the Labour Party,” he said. “Given what I have experienced of Labour, particularly 1997 and the road we were taken down after the wilderness of Thatcherism, I can’t get my head around how that party will realise his ideals.”

He slated politicians who “worship at the alter of corporatism” and believe nothing can work in the public sector. The result, he said, is Donald Trump.